Kathy Foley

July 13th, 2008

Back in March the media decided Ireland was the “ultimate nanny state”, following the release of figures showing there were 267 regulatory bodies telling us what we should and shouldn’t be doing. Add to that the smoking ban and curbs on alcohol advertising and the accusation would seem to ring true. Now I’m not so sure. Based on what we learnt last week, Ireland is not so much a “nanny”, but more of a “wayward mate who is a very bad influence”.

Pat Maher, of the National Roads Authority (NRA), told a planning hearing on proposed motorway service areas that the restaurants at such stops must serve full breakfasts, “including breakfast rolls”. While all recognised dietary guidelines would lead you to think official bodies should be actively dissuading us from consumption of these calorific monstrosities, the NRA is actively encouraging us to chow down on the meat-laden treats:

“Go on, get your chops around that. Isn’t it lovely? So salty and drenched in fat. Mmm. Can you feel your arteries clogging? Ah, you’ll have indigestion for a week now after that. Careful there, you’ve ketchup on your chin.”

Doesn’t the NRA care one whit for the health of the nation’s drivers? Thinking that perhaps I was overreacting, I rang a friend who is a nutritionist. She was horrified. “Breakfast rolls are lethal, just desperate. I certainly wouldn’t be recommending them. God, the breakfast roll is the ruination of this country.”

So what should be served instead? “Oat-based cereal, maybe,” she mused. “Although it’s hard to imagine truckers tucking into that. I wouldn’t have a problem with them having a healthy breakfast, with grilled bacon and scrambled eggs.

“Or I suppose they could have a breakfast roll, if they added a little gym to the new service stations. Half-an- hour workout and you can have your breakfast roll.”

We both took a moment to ponder a motorway gym full of sweaty truckers. “Maybe not,” I said.

On reflection, I don’t know why I’m so surprised at the NRA’s blatant disregard for our cholesterol levels. After all, this is not the first time it has been so dismissive of health and safety issues. That it has got so far as the planning stage for three motorway service areas borders on miraculous. For a long time, it was vigorously opposed to rest stops on the grounds that our motorways were not long enough. As anyone who has driven for endless miles in increasingly uncomfortable need of an urgent “pit-stop” can attest, our motorways are plenty long enough.

By 2004 the government had had enough of the NRA’s opposition to rest areas and told it to think again. So in September 2006 it came up with a plan to have 12 full service areas with toilets, petrol, shops, restaurants and 11 smaller rest areas with parking, loos and picnic tables built along the roads between Dublin and Belfast, Cork, Galway and Limerick. The service areas would be approximately 50km apart, with rest areas between them, so drivers would be able to stop every 25km or so.

It then took almost a year before the authority stirred itself to reveal the planned locations of these stops. Then, five months later, it executed a deft U-turn, scrapping the rest areas due to concerns about antisocial behaviour such as illegal dumping and prostitution. Apparently, that’s the sort of thing that motorists in other countries get up to.

So we must make do with the full service areas, whenever they are built. Meanwhile, as the Irish Road Haulage Association has pointed out, there is nowhere between Portlaoise and Dundalk for its members — or anyone — to stop for a break. Which is crazy when you consider the Road Safety Authority (RSA) estimates 60% of lorry drivers don’t obey rules dictating how long they can drive between rest periods and the gardai claim a fifth of all road deaths are caused by driver fatigue.

These facts would seem to underline the urgent need for rest stops on motorways. Indeed, the Rules of the Road specify that tired drivers should stop and take a 15-minute nap. But where? I don’t fancy pulling over for a snooze on the hard shoulder when the RSA says the average survival time of a car parked there is 10 minutes. Better to drive on, with the window down and the radio turned up, than risk being rear-ended.

Drivers want rest areas. In the European Road User Survey 2006, the overall average satisfaction score for “availability of places to stop” was 58 on a 100-point scale. In Ireland, it was 19, although Irish drivers rated the importance of having somewhere to stop at 84.

The NRA never wanted to oversee the provision of rest and service areas and is now using the flimsy excuse of antisocial behaviour to avoid giving us the former, while taking for ever to provide the latter, breakfast rolls or not. Why won’t it investigate the efficacy of safety measures like lighting, security cameras and policing that could be installed at rest areas, instead of scrapping them completely? It might not be the role of the NRA to ensure we all eat healthily, but surely it is within its remit to make sure we can drive safely to our destinations.